


Respawn

by darknessfactor



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Edge of Tomorrow Fusion, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, The Attano Family Curse, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 20:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11020587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darknessfactor/pseuds/darknessfactor
Summary: “The Outsider is the source of all magic in this world,” she reads.  “All things unnatural.  Is that true?”“No,” he says.  “It’s not true.”“I suppose the Outsider told you that.”“No.”  And her father’s face becomes stone.  “He didn’t.”Emily Kaldwin dies.  She wakes up in her office in Dunwall Tower.





	Respawn

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure that something like this has been done before but OH WELL. Here's my half-assed attempt at it. (I have no idea what I'm doing.)
> 
> Warning for violence, gore, implied suicide. Please turn away if any of those things are harmful for you to read.

Eight traitors surround her in a circle.  One is kicked over the nearby railing.  Emily’s blade sinks into the throats of two more, and a fourth receives it in his eye.  But eight traitors are eight traitors too many, and Emily feels a sword slide neatly between her ribs, through her heart.

Shouts of triumph ring out around her, as black already starts to cloud her vision.  Her anger does more to pump her blood through her veins than her failing heart, burning her even as her grasp on reality fades.

She wakes up in her office in Dunwall Tower.

* * *

 

On Emily’s twelfth birthday, the Tower is visited by the High Overseer.  

Yul Khulan is a man with thin smiles and sharp corners, but his brutal honesty won the approval of both her and her father.  Emily has already decided that, if she is to model her behavior during parliamentary proceedings and court after anyone, it will be High Overseer Khulan.  She does not know a single person who would dare to interrupt him while he is speaking.

That’s why she refrains from rolling her eyes when he presents her with a book about the dangers of the Outsider as a birthday gift.  

“Your majesty is surely old enough to understand that this gift is a cautionary one,” Khulan says, bowing, “and not something that will fan the flames of heretical interests.”

Emily smiles.  “Of course, High Overseer.”

The cover is bound in leather, and has white, blocky writing on the front.  The gift quickly becomes forgotten in favor of the beautifully carved wooden practice sword that her father has had fashioned for her, and she demands her first lesson from him that evening, when no one is around.  

“In two nights,” Corvo argues.  

“Tomorrow night.”

“Deal.”

It’s only when she returns to her rooms that she sees the book on the corner of her desk, in danger of toppling to the floor.  She makes a grab for it just before it has the chance, managing to grasp the cover and wondering how she could be so careless with a book that was bound so carefully.  Even if the subject matter is not something she cares for, she is hardly going to squander Khulan’s gift.

She realizes that she has caught the back cover, and frowns at the symbol inscribed in black on the last page.  It’s familiar to her, and she finds herself tracing the lines, wracking her brains until it occurs to her to look at the caption beneath it.

_ The Mark of the Outsider. _

Emily swallows.  In her mind’s eye, she sees Corvo holding her back from going around a corner in the Golden Cat, his eyes glowing gold.  The tattoo on his hand had appeared to be glowing the same color, but then she blinked and there was no trace of gold anywhere on him.  She sees him vanish from one spot and appearing in another, sees the mark on his hand pulsate in time with her own heartbeat, thundering in her ears.

Her father wears gloves nowadays.  Constantly.

Emily gathers up the book in her arms and marches to the door that connects the chambers of the Lord Protector to her own, knocking on it briskly.  Corvo opens the door and blinks at her.  

Wordlessly, she holds the book open for him to see.

Her father does not seem surprised.  Instead, he sighs, casting his eyes to the ceiling as he often does when she’s begging for combat lessons or asking about the next time Wyman will be visiting.  

“Well, the High Overseer thought you were old enough,” he says.  “Who am I to argue?”

That is how Emily learns about the Outsider - the truth of the Outsider - for the first time.  She’s allowed to see the Mark on his hand.  She examines it and compares it with the one in her book, finding that it is not an exact match.  The ink on the page does not give her the air of a grenade about to go off.

“So you’re magical,” she says flatly.

“Well... sure?  I guess.”

Emily shrugs.  “It’s alright,” she says.  “It makes a lot of sense, actually.  And it’s not hurting anyone.”  She squints at him.  “It doesn’t hurt  _ you _ , does it?”

“No.”

Emily isn’t 100 percent certain that she believes him.  

She flips through the pages of her book on Outsider heresy, pausing every so often to read a passage aloud and then look to her father for confirmation.  Every other word is a negative adjective, used to highlight how evil the Outsider and the Void are.  It makes her want to twitch in irritation, the way Corvo sometimes does when they’re dealing with nobles of the more simpering kind.

Emily pauses at another passage.  “ _ The Outsider is the source of all magic in this world _ ,” she reads.  “ _ All things unnatural.   _ Is  _ that  _ true?”

For the first time, Corvo hesitates to answer the question.  Emily has learned to be patient since taking the throne, however; she merely folds her hands in her lap and fixes him with her most attentive stare.

“No,” he finally says.  “It’s not true.”

“I suppose the Outsider told you that.”

“No.”  Her father’s face becomes stone.  “He didn’t.”

* * *

 

The first time, she dies after being surrounded by eight guards.

The second time, she’s shaking so badly from the first time that she falls off the ledge outside the window to her room. The ground rushes up to meet her, and she’s waking up in the office again.

The third time, she’s careful enough to wait until one of the guards is alone, but she’s close to the railing in the hallway and she’s convinced the ground is rushing up to meet her - but it’s the blade of the man she had been about to choke out that ends her.

After that, she wakes up in her office and starts crying.  She hasn’t allowed herself to cry since she was fourteen, when she finally succeeded in swallowing down her tears during the anniversary of her mother’s death.  She doesn’t know how long she stays there, curled up on the floor unable to move through her terror and confusion, but by the time the heaving in her chest subsides it’s too late.  

Two guards come in the room.  She lands an uppercut to the jaw on one, and manages to snap the neck of the other, but then other guards come rushing in.  Two hold her down, while the third bashes her head repeatedly against the desk.  Emily starts laughing after the third hit, and doesn’t stop even when she wakes up in the room again, finding it locked and deserted once more.

She looks at the desk, half-expecting it to be stained with her blood, but it is clean, like everything else in the room.  Maddeningly so.

It occurs to her, then, that they cannot beat her.  They cannot win, because she is going to be able to try again.  And again.  And again.

_ And again,  _ she says to herself as she manages to take out all the guards on her floor, only to be skewered by Mortimer Ramsay himself.

_ And again,  _ she says as she locks Ramsay in her safe room, climbing down to the streets of Dunwall.  The alarm is rung, and she is swarmed by guards.  She pulls the pin on a grenade and stands there with a serene smile, watching as their faces morph in horror when they realize she has no intention of moving.  

_ And again,  _ as she makes it all the way to the harbor without being seen, only to hit her head when one last guard manages to sneak up on her instead, and she plummets into the water.

When she finally does make it to the  _ Dreadful Wale _ , her sword is stained with the blood of every single traitorous guard she encountered, and she feels like she’s aged a thousand years.  Meagan Foster greets her with a blank face, one that gives away nothing even as her gaze travels to the folding blade in her hand.

“Welcome aboard,” she says.  

* * *

 

“Ah,” the Outsider says, his eyes lighting up in recognition.  “Thirty loops, Emily?  Already?”

She lunges for him, folding sword already out.  “You bastard, if this hell is  _ your  _ doing -”

But the Outsider is no longer there.  Emily immediately whips around to find that he is now standing at her left, watching her with his head tilted.  It’s not unlike the cats she’s encountered living in the lower levels of the Tower.  She bares her teeth at him, aware of how feral she probably looks and not particularly caring.

“I can assure you this is not my doing,” he says.

“Who’s is it, then?” Emily asks.  “How could this - I don’t  _ want  _ this -”

“No?” the Outsider says.  “Not even when it appears to be your best chance to take back your throne?  To right the wrongs that Delilah surely intends to cause - or perhaps you’d prefer to use it to take revenge for what has been done to you and your father?”

“I don’t want this,” Emily repeats.  She’s eternally thankful that her voice does not tremble.

The Outsider chuckles.  “Really now, Empress.  You should know better than to lie to  _ me _ .”

He does offer her his own power, though, and she gives it little thought before agreeing to take it.  Some naive part of her believes that the magic of the Outsider will somehow cancel out whatever it is that’s happening to her, and when she feels the Mark settling on her skin, writing its way across her bones, she could almost believe it.

Before she leaves the Void, she thinks she can hear the Outsider laughing.

* * *

 

The first rule is that it does not seem to matter how far she makes it.  Each time, she always wakes up back in her office in Dunwall Tower.

The first time it happens in Karnaca, after she re-wires a Wall of Light incorrectly and feels blinding pain before waking up, she nearly screams in frustration.  There is no Mark on her hand, once more, and there are still just as many guards between her and the  _ Dreadful Wale _ as there were before.  She watches Alexi die again, kills Ramsay this time, and responds to Meagan’s questions with grunts.  

“Thirty-one,” the Outsider muses, and his Mark burns into her flesh once more.  

It takes another eight tries before she’s able to make it through Dunwall again, and she starts trying to keep a guide in her mind - a step-by-step methodology for Not Dying.  She doesn’t have Callista’s ability to take pictures with her eyes, nor does she possess the near-perfect order of Wyman’s mind.  She is a creature of impulse and instinct, like her father.  It’s probably the reason why she never took to ruling all that well.

But the guide... helps, somewhat.

Slide along the window ledge to get to the Royal Quarters.  Peek through the keyhole to check the position of the guard standing at the railing.  Check if anyone else is observing him; if not, then kill him or knock him unconscious (both options are viable, so long as she stows the body somewhere afterwards).  Drop down behind the second guard, and incapacitate him as well.

Killing Ramsay outright saves more time.

Drop-kill the first guard outside Dunwall Tower.  

Cause a ruckus in the bar near the docks to draw the attention of the guards, then slip out the back.

Watch out for that last guard, hiding behind shipping containers.

She makes it to Meagan.  She can probably finish all of Meagan’s sentences for her, if she wanted to.  

The one thing that stops changing is her fate once she reaches the Addermire Institute.  She has getting through to the station down to an art form, and traversing most of the Institute eventually becomes as second-nature as breathing.  But Grim Alex (the more times she explores Addermire, the more she learns) always  _ knows  _ that she’s there just before she strikes, and she kills her again.  And again.  And again.

Including one particularly gruesome death in which the Crown Killer digs her fingernails into Emily’s throat and  _ pulls _ .

That is, until Emily tries to Shadow-Walk for the first time, and rips Alexandria Hypatia in half before Grim Alex has time to react.

She loses control.  She can’t snap back out of it, like she can when she Sees.  Her limbs snake across the ground as she crawls, screaming even though no one can hear her, and she feels terror building up in her throat at the smoky tendrils that rise from her arms.  

It wears off, of course.  Her own flesh pulled around her once again, and she stares at the viscera on her hands, then at the corpse that lies at her feet.  She’s brought down the Crown Killer, but she turned into a monster that was equally horrifying in order to do so.

It’s just as well that the Watchtower spots her on her way out of the Institute, then, the incendiary bolt slamming into her side and setting her alight.

* * *

 

“You look tired, Empress.”

The Outsider is giving her what she calls his Considering Look.  He is perched on an outcropping of slate-gray stone, hunched over slightly with his arms curled around his ankles.  It strikes Emily as a very childish pose - but then, if it weren’t for the Void whispering around him, and the pits where his eyes should be, he would likely appear younger than herself.

Of all the people she has encountered since this madness began, his words are the only ones that change with each iteration.

His observation goes straight over her head; she has a purpose of her own, and no time for his cryptic nonsense.

“I want to keep it this time,” she says.

He tilts his head to the side.  “You’re going to have to be more specific, Empress.”

“I want to keep the Mark,” she clarifies.  “When I wake up, I want it to already be on my hand.”

His mouth curves into a smirk.  “Why, Empress.  Do you not enjoy our chats?  Or maybe you’d prefer there to be no variety in your life.  Just keep fortifying your ‘guide’ until it’s completely indisputable.”

“You exist outside of time, don’t you?” she asks.  “Isn’t that how you always know how many loops I’ve done?  You can let me keep the Mark.”

The Considering Look is back, but that is in no way a ‘yes’.  She is increasingly under the impression that this curse is a large part of the reason why the Outsider chose to bestow his Mark upon her in the first place.  He likes watching each redo play out, likes to see how her choices differ in each instance.  She wonders if he likes watching her neck snap when she falls on her head, or if he likes it when electricity sears her veins.

How many times has he watched her die?  Has he been there every time?

“You’re right,” he finally says, “but only partially.”

“About what?”  She knows that he has some idea of what goes on in her head.

He smiles.  “All of it.”  

The Mark is written onto her skin before she can reply, and she’s waking up in a cold sweat only moments later.  It doesn’t feel any different compared with the other times she’s done this - there’s still the sense that she has too much -  _ is  _ too much - and that shadows are going to burst through her skin.

She goes to Addermire.  Rips the Crown Killer in half.  Goes back to the  _ Dreadful Wale _ .  Goes to the Avenda District, and ends up pulling a guard over the edge of a cliff with her.  The fall is almost exhilarating, with the screams of the guard ringing through her ears -

Emily wakes up in her office in Dunwall.  Before she can give it too much thought, she uses Far Reach to rip the door off its hinges and Shadow-Walks through the Tower, ripping every single guard apart.

She catches sight of her face in a broken mirror.  Her smile is jagged and broken, but for the first time she isn’t afraid of the shadows pouring off her form.

“Well?”  The Outsider is still waiting for her in her sleep. 

“Shouldn’t you already know the answer to that?” she asks him.  “Don’t you like to watch?”

Her tone is flippant, and her words are dismissive.  She’s drunk on power and she knows it, and he knows it, because this is the first time since this nightmare started that she feels completely in control.  There is darkness sloughing off of her body and she doesn’t hate the sight of herself in the mirror and she doesn’t die once while she escapes from Dunwall.

“It’s almost like I’ve made it too easy for you,” the Outsider observes.  “But no matter.”

He vanishes into smoke, as always, but his words linger: “You still have a long way to go.”

* * *

 

Progress is slow, even with the Outsider’s Mark.  Her deaths begin to number into the hundreds, until soon she barely feels pain anymore, can move past it to the point that she’ll keep fighting even when her opponents expect her to die (and seeing their eyes widen in shock and horror almost makes the feeling of her body succumbing worth it).  Their lives grow smaller and smaller, and appear so far away from her.  Sometimes she chooses to decimate everyone in her path, and other times she slips by unnoticed, but her decisions have less to do with morality and more to do with curiosity.

And the Heart - the Heart keeps crying for her.  

It (she finds that she cannot think of it as her mother) is not aware of the loops, as the Outsider is, but it knows that something is wrong.  It speaks words of condemnation when she links together the lives of four men, stabbing one and watching as the other four fall.  She goes to sleep with the sounds of quiet sobbing in her ear, and it unnerves her, because the Heart does not  _ know  _ \- and yet it seems to be grieving every single one of her deaths.

After so many deaths, and so many successes-yet-failures, Emily no longer needs the guide.  So she focuses on learning about the people instead.

The Heart tells her so much, rips their metaphorical hearts out of their chest cavities.  Emily examines each and every one, judging for herself which ones deserve mercy and which do not.  The Heart reprimands her every so often, but Emily has become skilled at ignoring its words when it suits her.

One loop, on a whim, Emily points the Heart at Meagan Foster.

“Billie Lurk hides, and does not dare to emerge from the shell that is Meagan Foster,” the Heart whispers.  “Not in front of you, at least.  The woman whose mother she helped kill.”

Emily’s emotions, up until this point, have been driven down into the depths of her heart by too much repetition.  Now the flames of hatred are fanned back into existence by those words, and Emily finds herself lunging for ‘Meagan’, her sword already in her hand.  Meagan turns towards her, but the look on her face is not one of shock.  Instead, it is one of resignation.  Of something weighing heavily on her shoulders, something that she has never been able to lift.

Emily stops short, her blade hovering just barely an inch from Billie’s throat.   _ Why,  _ she wants to scream.   _ Why why why why- _

Instead, she  _ breaks _ .

Her words a jumbled mess, the story of the loops spills out of her like blood from a sliced throat.  Hysterical sobs catch in her throat, even as Billie kneels next to her with a wary look on her face.  Emily finds it hard to stop speaking once she starts, and she tells Billie everything.  

How she sometimes kills and sometimes does not.  How she goes on a massive rampage at times, and at others she keeps to the shadows.  She even confesses about the Outsider and the Mark she now wears on her hand, and how the Outsider is the only person who knows about the loops besides her.

Billie takes it all in silently.  When Emily finally finds that her words have dried up, leaving her shuddering on the floor, she says, “That’s fucked up.”

Emily snorts.  “No shit.”

“I mean, it kind of makes sense.  Considering you finish half of my sentences for me, and you keep pulling your feet off the table right before I’m about to ask you to, and how nothing ever seems to surprise you.”

“You’re surprising me right now,” Emily tells her.  Billie blinks.  “By believing me.”

“Yeah, well.  I saw some of the shit Delilah can do, so... none of this seems that strange.”

Emily considers pushing her for answers about what that ‘shit’ might entail, but decides against it in the end.  

The Heart makes nothing of her confession except to cry quietly, the sounds ringing in her ears, but that isn’t enough to make Emily sink down into the depths of despair again.  It’s the first time that someone other than the Outsider knows, and it’s the lightest that she’s felt in... she doesn’t know what the cumulative time for the loops is, but it feels like years.  

Billie doesn’t judge her, and listens patiently while Emily explains some of her more specific frustrations with the loops, and regardless of Emily’s inability to forgive her... she thinks she might love Billie Lurk a bit.

(She doesn't think about how it won't last.)

* * *

 

Emily has lost count of the loops.  

The first time she realizes this, she stares up at the ceiling in her office and decides that she’s not going to move.  Maybe she’s been going about this all wrong.  Maybe the real path is to play it safe, and to play along, and wait and see where it gets her.

It’s about an hour after she awakes that the two guards come in.  She doesn’t resist when they lift her.  They bind her wrists behind her, dragging her down the stairs and through the throne room.  Mortimer Ramsay watches passively as she’s pulled passed him.  Emily can see all the hundreds of times she’s killed him, and it’s the memory of those times that brings forth a smile.  

The fear that flashes in his eyes is a very satisfying last glimpse of the inside of Dunwall Tower.

As Ramsay stated during the coup (the coup that happened so long ago), she’s taken to Coldridge Prison.  Jeers follow her through the cold, damp walls, until the prison guards bang their batons on the bars and yell for the prisoners to shut up.  She’s given a cell in solitary confinement (evidently they still respect her enough to give her  _ that  _ courtesy), and is locked in and left there.  Emily sits gingerly on the foul-smelling mattress, aware that they likely plan to keep her here for months.

Months that won’t be the same, maddening repetition.  Months that won’t mean death and restarting.

She is given regular meals.  The bread is stale, but not poisoned.  Emily thinks about the loop during which, out of some insane curiosity, she’d started eating bloodflies.  The memory of the crunch between her teeth brings forth a hunger she isn’t expecting, and she immediately tries to forget.

Delilah visits her on the third day.  

“Emily,” she croons.  “I hope you’re comfortable.”

Emily shrugs, still marveling at the fact that she hasn’t had to constantly be on the lookout, on the hunt.  It’s a nice break.  “Think I’m getting used to the smell.”

It occurs to her that this is her chance to fuck with her ‘aunt’, so she sits up with a grin.  “So, how am I going to be executed?”

Delilah narrows her eyes at her.  “You’re awfully eager to die.”

Emily could’ve choked on the irony, but she settles for continuing.  “Going to send Dr. Hypatia after me?  Have her visit me in the cell under the pretense of me being sick, and then have her rip me to pieces?  Going to find some kind of ‘proof’ that I’m the Crown Killer?”

She didn’t think Delilah could get any paler until now.  

“You  _ knew _ ,” she hisses, “and you did nothing?”

“Or we could talk about Ashworth.  How is your girlfriend these days?”

Delilah rears back as though she’s been slapped.  “What is the meaning of this, girl?”

But Emily only laughs.  She points at her ‘aunt’ and she laughs until her stomach hurts, well-aware that it’s only making Delilah more incensed.  She’s tired of being the butt of the joke in the Empire, and she’s tired of having to carefully take apart Delilah’s allies; for once, she just wants to find something  _ funny  _ again.

Another thought occurs to her: Delilah is right here, in front of her.  Alone.

Delilah has no idea that Emily’s been Marked.  

Emily shifts into her Shadow Walk form easily, welcoming the sensation of shadows wrapping around her form.  Certainly, Delilah can survive being run through, but what about...?

Delilah’s scream isn’t cut off when Emily tears her head from her shoulders.  Instead, it carries on, echoing throughout the prison.  Emily, not really sure what to do, grabs a bunch of roses from Delilah’s still-thrashing body and shoves them in her mouth.

Delilah - or rather, Delilah’s head - falls silent, glaring at her.  Emily shrugs, tucks the head underneath her arm, and Far Reaches until she’s out of the prison.  She’s already making her way through the sewers when the alarms start blaring as they realize she’s escaped (and they’ve found Delilah Copperspoon’s headless body).  Delilah’s already spat out the roses, but she seems to realize that trying to scream again is futile this deep in Dunwall’s sewer.

“And here I heard that rooftops were your domain, little sparrow,” she hisses.  She continues to spit vitriol at Emily as they make their way through the sewers.  Emily sees a group of rats by one of the grates and considers tossing Delilah’s head to them, but ends up tucking it more securely under her arm.

Somewhere in the Void, the Outsider is laughing his ass off at her.  She just knows it.

“I hope you like rat,” she says to Delilah, and can’t quite stop her smug smirk at the look of horror that appears on Delilah’s face.

* * *

 

The Outsider shrine that Emily finds is hidden away in the basement of the building, blocked by two bloodfly nests.  She Shadow-Walks between them, leaving the insects undisturbed, and reforms herself in front of it, picking up the rune and closing her eyes as she’s pulled into the Void.

The Outsider doesn’t even get the chance to speak before she wordlessly sits and leans against the outcropping of slate next to her.  She stares him down, daring him to comment on it.

“You continue to surprise me,” he eventually says.  

Emily sighs.  “What would I have to do to get you to let me just... stay here?  For an hour.  Or two.  Or five.”

The Outsider dissolves, and re-materializes sitting next to her.  “I was under the impression that time was of the essence, your majesty,” he observes.  “But then, I suppose you have nothing  _ but  _ time, do you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”  As if she needs to be reminded.

He hums quietly.  “I suppose it’s of no great cost to me if you stay here.  For a short while, at least.”

“Thank you.”

The sincerity in her voice must surprise him, because he teleports in front of her, head cocked to the side.  He reminds her of a bird, sometimes, flitting about in the Void.  An odd comparison, she knows, since most people link him with the sea.  Emily would counter their claims by pointing out that many birds also have black eyes.  

If the Outsider knows that she’s now trying to picture him as a bluejay, he says nothing of it.  

“Did you Mark me because of my curse?” she asks abruptly.

“No.”  It’s unlike him to not beat around the bush, but she appreciates it.  He likely knows that she feels like she’s drowning, and is giving her time to breathe.  For once.  “I believe I would have Marked you regardless of your... ability.  Though I won’t deny that it certainly lends to how impressive you are.”

“Impressive,” Emily repeats.  “You know that I tried throwing dismembered body parts at people during one iteration, right?”

“Despite any severed limbs that might have flown through the air,” he says, “You spent the next loop painstakingly avoiding any interaction with anyone in Karnaca at all.  And throughout it all, your mind has survived relatively intact.  It’s astonishing.”

“ _ Intact _ ?” Emily splutters.  “I can’t even remember all the loops anymore.  I... every so often I just... lose it, and everyone either ends up slaughtered or I do something so stupid that it’s inevitable that I die.  Or I get... too attached.  Fuck, I slept with Billie that one time and of course she had to die on me afterward, and I... I had to...”

The Outsider offers nothing in the way of comfort, and it... helps, oddly enough.  She has the dignity of being given the chance to gather herself back together without any mocking or sympathy from him.  She breathes in deeply, forcing herself to pause the rush of images in her mind, of too many mistakes repeated, and too many deaths hitting her at the same time.

“Like I said,” he says, once she’s recovered.  “Impressive.”

Emily pulls her knees to her chest, letting her forehead rest against them.  “I can’t imagine being you,” she mutters.  “Seeing all the possibilities of every person.  Sounds exhausting.  It’s hard enough when it’s just me.”

“I only  _ see  _ the possibilities,” he counters.  “Glimpses.  Barely anything compared to what actually plays out.  In truth, Emily Kaldwin, I envy you.”

“And why the hell would you do that?”

“Because,” he breathes, and for the first time Emily hears something like longing in his voice, “You get to  _ live  _ them.”

* * *

 

Emily wakes up in her office.  This is nothing new.

Emily decides to traverse a path that she has only traveled a few times before.  The journey of being dragged to Coldridge Prison is not as familiar as the way to Billie’s ship, but it is still somewhat familiar.  Therefore, this is also nothing new.

She’s placed in solitary confinement.  She’s given stale bread.  She tries not to think of eating bloodflies.

Delilah visits her on the third day.  This is nothing new.

This time, however, the script changes.  

“Emily,” she croons.  “I hope you’re comfortable.”

And Emily replies with, “You can’t win, Delilah.”

She tells Delilah everything.  She estimates how many loops she’s gone through.  She tells Delilah that every time she dies, she wakes up back in her office in Dunwall Tower.  She explains how she’s been painstakingly getting further on dismantling Delilah’s network with each time, coming closer and closer to achieving her goal.

All through this, Delilah remains silent.

When Emily finally finishes explaining, she asks, “What do you want?”

“You can be Empress,” Emily says.  “That’s fine.  I wasn’t good at it anyway.”

“Then what?”  Delilah looks bored.  “Do you want a ship you can sail away in?  Your precious Wyman, or whatever their name is?  A place in my court, so long as it’s not the position of Empress?”

Emily smiles.  She’s tried all of those already.  None of them worked out particularly well for her.

“No,” she says.  “I want you to teach me.”

Delilah raises both eyebrows.

And so Emily learns.  She learns about how to draw on the power of the Void without actually relying on being marked by the Outsider.  She learns how to summon a gravehound.  She learns how to bind her life force to a cameo, so that she cannot die without it being destroyed.  She learns how to share her power with others - being marked has more uses than just teleportation, Delilah tells her.

None of this is a problem, in Emily’s eyes.  The Outsider visits her in her dreams exactly once, demanding to know what she’s doing, but she now understands exactly what Delilah’s doing to him and his own selfishness in Marking her, and she uses her newfound power to banish him from her mind.

And - slowly, as slow as thorny vines creeping into her heart - Emily does indeed come to love her Aunt Delilah.  It’s the longest she’s been alive in one loop since this madness started, and she knows that it’s because her aunt decided to teach her and treat her fairly and maybe even love her as well.  There’s genuine pride in Delilah’s eyes when Emily is able to manipulate the shadows around her into solid forms, an extension of her Shadow Walk that she’s never even dreamed of.  

(And all the while, the Empire of the Isles rots from the inside out.  Delilah’s poison spreads throughout the city, claiming lives without judgment.  Other cities begin to fall as well, and people die or are twisted into monsters who practice the same dark magic, and the world draws closer and closer to despair.)

On a night filled with fog, Emily paces back and forth in her chambers, ignoring how the shadows curl around her feet.  There is something coming - or so the shadows whisper - and she knows that she needs to be on guard for it.  Always be prepared.  Always be watching.  Lessons that Delilah had imparted on her.

The next thing she knows, she’s choking on her own blood.

Meagan - Billie - is standing in front of her, a bloodied knife on her hand.  The Outsider’s Mark glows orange on her left hand.  Her expression is colder than Emily has ever seen.

“Don’t fuck up the next one,” she warns, as Emily’s world goes dark.

* * *

 

Emily Kaldwin has been a thousand different people.  An assassin, a witch, a spy, a heretic.  She can’t possibly remember them all, but somehow they all hide beneath her skin, waiting to play their role once again.  She has been someone that her mother would’ve been proud of, and someone that her mother was horrified by.  She has killed, and she has shown mercy.  She is a walking contradiction - both pariah and messiah.

Emily Kaldwin has been a thousand different people, but it isn’t until her folded sword finally sinks into Delilah’s throat that she becomes an Empress.

* * *

 

“My mother used to tell me a story about being in a shipwreck.  She was below deck when the ship smashed into the side of a cliff, and a piece of driftwood pierced her chest.  She woke up back in her hammock, a few hours before the wreck.

“It didn’t matter what she did, or how far she got.  She always woke up back in that hammock.  She tried a million different ways to survive, and to get back to Karnaca alive, but every time she died it was back to square one.  She told me that she used to think that she’d been banished to the Void, and that she was living out some kind of punishment.  Not the case, obviously, but it might as well have been.”

Emily stares at her father.  He seems like he should have far more gray in his hair than he does.  

“Was it the Rat Plague, for you?” she asks.

He nods.  “Every time I died, I woke up back in my cell in Coldridge, the day of my escape.  Same thing as you: it didn’t matter how far I got.  I’d always get reset back to the same place.  Eventually I figured out that I would just have to keep going, keep surviving as best as I could, until I eventually reached a point where death wasn’t a constant threat anymore.”

Emily swallows.  “Do you know if there’s ever... a cut-off, or...?”

Corvo smiles grimly.  “I haven’t died since rescuing you from Havelock.  My mother eventually passed away, which would suggest that it ends when we die of more natural causes, but... I can’t say for sure.  Maybe it’ll be this way forever, just... reliving our lives for all eternity.  Maybe it’s the way the Attano family is.”

“I don’t know if I could handle it,” she murmurs.  “Having to go back there again.  Especially after I’ve finally...”

She’s not sure how to describe it.  It doesn’t feel like she’s won - not when she’s carrying so many threads of lives within her, where they will always wait beneath the surface.  Not when her deaths flash through her dreams, and when she wakes up with a scream lodged in her throat, half-expecting to see the inside of her office in Dunwall Tower again.

“I’m sorry,” her father sighs.  “I should’ve told you about it.  I didn’t think it would... I hoped it might skip a generation.  Somehow.”

Emily sends him a shaky smile.  “I understand why you didn’t, Father.  It  _ is  _ a far-fetched tale.  And at any rate, it seems to be over now.  Why worry about it?”

He smiles back.  “Why indeed?”

* * *

 

Of course, Emily muses as she crouches behind a pillar, she and her father would be standing in the exact same spot where her mother died when they get attacked.  

At least this time, the assassins have the decency to not be aided with the power of the Outsider.  She glances over at Corvo, who’s leaning against the other pillar, a scowl on his face.

Ten years have done little to temper either of their skills.

Emily manages to sink a crossbow bolt into the head of one of the attackers.  She considers just using Shadow Walk to take care of the rest, but she’s been careful to hide her heresy from the Abbey, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she was witnessed using her abilities by some Overseer that happened to be running over to aid her.

Indeed, shouts are starting to reach her ears, as her guards come running to her and her father’s aid.  The assassins visibly panic, most of them scrambling to get away.  One of them fires a parting shot in their direction before they, too, sprint away.

Corvo has stuck his head out from behind the pillar, one last time, to check if the assassins are gone.  

The crossbow bolt catches him in the throat.

A scream escapes Emily even as she watches him fall to his knees, the implications of that one crossbow bolt ringing through her bones.  In that moment, she knows that the Outsider is watching her, can feel his anticipation in the way the Mark burns on her hand.  

It isn’t much of a decision.  It’s so much longer for Corvo, so much  _ worse. _

Emily runs and throws herself over the railing.

She think she hears her father try to shout for her, cut off when he chokes.  She doesn’t hear him.  The ground rushes up to meet her, and - 

**Author's Note:**

> If you thought that Emily played basketball with Delilah's head in that one loop, you're absolutely right.
> 
> (Btw Delilah's headless body caught up to them and killed Emily.)


End file.
